In a coastal town called Metulu, better known as Pig Island, secrets, vice, and hypocrisy lurk beneath the surface of everyday life. Adam, a quiet young boatman who earns his living aboard a vessel named Sabar (Patience), pours his unspoken thoughts into a worn notebook. When he encounters Julita, a beautiful woman attached to a nobleman named Damkar, he falls into a love he never dares to confess. Years later, Adam discovers that Julita had loved him too, but by then, all that remains are memories, a single letter, and words that have lost their intended recipient. Pulau Babi is a story of unspoken love, class divisions, social hypocrisy, and the regret that follows loss.

Pulau Babi

Pig Island

By Izzat Dahelan

On the district map, it was called Metulu.

But the people along the coast called it Pig Island.

Not because pigs roamed freely there. According to Mak Suria, it was called Pig Island because far too many sins came alive after the sun went down.

By day, Metulu was no different from any other small seaside town. Wooden shophouses stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the jetty. The smells of fish, salt, coffee, and boat fuel mingled in the air. Fishermen unloaded their catch. Barefoot children ran through the streets. Old men sat in coffee shops, discussing fish, politics, and the private disgraces of other people.

Night gave the town another face.

Red lights glowed along narrow alleys. Gambling houses threw open their doors to a carnival of vice. Boats arrived from across the water, carrying men eager to spend their money, forget their wives, or simply search for something they could not find at home.

Some other kind of happiness. Some other kind of freedom.

Adam ferried some of those men.

His passenger boat was small and old, its blue paint eaten away by years of salt and sea. At the bow, a single word had been painted by his late grandfather many years before.

SABAR.

Patience.

Adam was much the same.

Perhaps a little too patient.

He rarely argued. Rarely spoke of what weighed upon his soul or wandered through his mind. Before a word could escape his lips, he would examine it over and over inside his head.

Turn it around. Weigh it. Worry over it.

Until, in the end, he could no longer bring himself to say it.

Whatever he could not say, he wrote in his old notebook.

A small book with a brown cover, kept beneath the seat of his boat. While waiting for passengers, Adam wrote about the sea, the rain, poverty, his mother's rough hands, and the stories and misdeeds of people who possessed more secrets than money.

But his pen did not concern itself only with the small happenings around him.

It also wrote about a woman.

Her name was Julita.

The first time he laid eyes on her, the evening sun was sinking towards the horizon.

Julita walked along the jetty in a dark red dress. The sea breeze played with her hair. Several heads turned. Conversations that had been lively only moments before fell into an awkward silence.

Adam knew her name long before he knew her face.

Everyone knew Julita.

Damkar's woman.

Damkar was a nobleman.

An expensive woman.

A woman greeted with smiles and warm welcomes to her face, only to be insulted the moment she walked away.

Adam watched her for a few moments.

Then lowered his gaze.

Not long afterwards, he opened his little notebook.

His hand hovered above the paper for a long time before he finally put down a line.

"Some people arrive like the sea at high tide. We never invite them, yet before we know it, the water has already reached our doorstep."

Adam closed the notebook.

In the distance, the sound of Julita's heels faded along the wooden planks of the jetty.

Tok! Tok! Tok!

Then silence.

Years later, Adam could still remember the sound of those footsteps. The colour of Julita's dress remained vivid in his memory. The smell of salt in the evening air. The sunlight breaking upon the water.

Everything was still there, as clear as ever.

Except for the one thing he had never managed to do.

Speak what was buried in his heart.

By the time Adam finally learned that Julita had loved him too, she had already become a name spoken mostly in prayers.

Only a single letter remained to soothe his longing and sorrow.

And far too many words had lost the person they were meant to reach.